“Getting ahead without being a jerk” is actually what our young friend said he wanted to discuss. I will use the pseudonym “Oz Man” for him due to the volatile nature of his dilemma!

Notice that he is so distraught that he offers no salutation!

At the age of 17, I entered my journey of wanting to be a sound professional. At age 27…

… that makes it a decade later, right?

… I have gone to “rock and roll U” and have been spat back into the land of Oz.

Who spat you back there, Oz Man? Was it the wizard? How many times did I tell you – pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! But you are like my son, the young soundman – you just won’t listen!

I have worked in three other states as a sound guy/recording engineer.

Sounds like you’re a pretty rockin’ guy!

So, what’s the problem? Do you want to be bad, do you want to be nationwide? I should have guessed…

While fairly confident of my skills, so far I have come to ruin by letting myself get walked on by the other guy so as not be branded an a**hole.

Don’t be so hard on yourself, Oz Man! There is no XLR cable so tangled that it cannot untangled again! Preferably by the young soundman rather than by myself… But I digress!

Look for the path that does not yearn to tread upon your soundman neighbor’s face, in sweet retaliation for him trampling you.

To be safe on a karmic level, you can only wish that he stop steppin’ on you! Once you are picking up the fat paychecks, this guy will be a tiny half-forgotten blip on your internal radar screen.

Some guy wrote in and was bugging me a couple years ago about branding - I can’t quite remember now what he was so bugged about. But listen – we are not cows! When they try to hold you down and put that hot iron on you, snatch it out of their hands, and brandish it up in their faces!

Buddha never said that it wasn’t okay to threaten them until they wet their trousers, he just said you will only complicate matters if you do in fact brand the assailants!